letter, but what are we to say of its profound goodness and
tenderness? It is written as though he had the mother's face
before his eyes, and saw her wincing in the flesh at every
word. And what, again, are we to say of its sober
truthfulness, not exaggerating, not running to phrases, not
seeking to make a hero out of what was only an ordinary but
good and brave young man? Literary reticence is not
Whitman's stronghold; and this reticence is not literary, but
humane; it is not that of a good artist but that of a good
man. He knew that what the mother wished to hear about was
Frank; and he told her about her Frank as he was.


V.


Something should be said of Whitman's style, for style is of
the essence of thinking. And where a man is so critically
deliberate as our author, and goes solemnly about his poetry
for an ulterior end, every indication is worth notice. He
has chosen a rough, unrhymed, lyrical verse; sometimes
instinct with a fine processional movement; often so rugged
and careless that it can only be described by saying that he
has not taken the trouble to write prose. I believe myself
that it was selected principally because it was easy to
write, although not without recollections of the marching
measures of some of the prose in our English Old Testament.
According to Whitman, on the other hand, "the time has
arrived to essentially break down the barriers of form
between Prose and Poetry . . . for the most cogent purposes